Lot 19: Hendrick Jansz. ter Brugghen (?The Hague 1588-1629 Utrecht)

Hendrick Jansz. ter Brugghen (?The Hague 1588-1629 Utrecht)
The Mocking of Christ
oil on canvas
43¼ x 52¾ in. (109.8 x 134 cm)

Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, The James Fairfax Collection of Old Master Paintings, Drawings, and Prints, 17 April-20 July 2003, no. 9 (catalog by R. Beresford and P. Raissis).
Sydney, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Darkness and Light, Caravaggio and His World, 29 November 2003-22 February 2004, no. 16; Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 11 March-30 May 2004.

L.J. Slatkes and W. Franits, The paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588-1629), Philadelphia, 2007, pp. 104, 288, and 321, no. A18, pl. 17, color pl. IV.

(Possibly) Frederick van Alweijn, Amsterdam, before 1665.
(Probably) Abraham Perroneau, Amsterdam, before 1692.
Private collection, Riga, 1952.
Anonymous sale; Ellekilde Auktionhus, Copenhagen, 14 April 1994, lot 160, as 'Unknown Italian Master'.
with Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London, in association with Thirty Victoria Street, Sydney, from whom purchased by the present owner.

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

Hendrick ter Brugghen was the leading proponent of the 'Utrecht Caravaggisti', a group who flourished in the Dutch city in the 1620s, and disseminated the innovative style of Caravaggio through their singular approach to religious, as well as secular, subjects. Ter Brugghen returned from Rome in 1614, and was joined in 1621, upon his return from Rome, by Dirck van Baburen, with whom Ter Brugghen shared a studio. Along with Gerrit van Honthorst, these three artists employed the strong lighting and close-cropped compositions of Caravaggio in their own history and genre scenes, striving for realism with extreme success. The present Mocking of Christ was painted within a year of Baburen's sudden death, when Ter Brugghen's art began to focus anew on religious subjects with a physicality and monumentality seen in the present lot.

Detailed in the texts of Matthew, Mark and John, the Crowning with Thorns is a crucial moment in the Passion of Christ. Following traditional medieval iconography, a soldier uses his staff to press the crown of thorns onto Christ's head. The unusual motif of a soldier, kneeling and sticking his tongue out, would have been familiar to contemporary viewers, and Honthorst used this kneeling figure in depictions of the same subject, for instance Christ crowned with thorns (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles). It seems Ter Brugghen followed the text as closely as possible; as discussed in Matthew's gospel, the kneeling soldier holds a reed, which Christ prepares to accept. During conservation in 1988, it was discovered that the paint in Christ's cloak contained traces of smalt blue and red lake, pigments that are unstable and prone to fading. These two pigments combined would have created a brilliant purple, the color of Christ's cloak in the texts of Mark and John.

Hendrick ter Brugghen first painted this scene in a larger canvas, now in Copenhagen and dated 1620. This initial treatment is far more crowded, the diagonals of soldier's arms and staffs creating an almost chaotic scene in which the defeated Christ is, but for his red cloak, lost. The current composition focuses not on the mocking of Christ, rather his crowning. Interestingly, as time elapsed, Ter Brugghen returned to Northern sources for his compositional motifs. As pointed out by Beresford and Raissis, the simplified composition and figure of Christ are derived from Albrecht Dürer's 1508-9 woodcut of Christ crowned with thorns. The woodcuts of Lucas van Leyden were equally influential; in fact, several figures, including the kneeling tormentor in the present lot, are related to treatments of the scene by both Dürer and van Leyden. The synthesis of older Northern iconography and a revolutionary understanding of light and dark, honed during his time in Italy, mark this painting as one of ter Brugghen's most interesting. The spare image focuses the beholder on the juxtaposition between acceptance and brutality, and creates a truly moving composition.

Though large in size, this intimate composition was evidently popular. A direct copy, considered by Nicolson to be painted by Ter Brugghen and his workshop, is in a private collection, Washington D.C. Significant pentiments in the sleeve and cuff on the kneeling tormentor in the present lot make clear that it is the prime version. Other versions of the subject are in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille and the Art Museum of Irkutsk, Russia. These versions clearly derive from Caravaggio's picture of the same subject, now in the Kunsthistoriches, Vienna.